A few more Red Wings-related comments related to Kovalchuk's mega-deal

In the wake of Ilya Kovalchuk signing a massive, $100-plus million, front-loaded 17-year contract with the New Jersey Devils, more than a few pundits have craned their necks toward Red Wings GM Ken Holland and suggested that his "lifetime contracts" for Henrik Zetterberg and Johan Franzen served as main contributors in "breaking" the CBA. Today, Yahoo Sports' Greg "Puck Daddy" Wyshynski takes a more circumspect look at the concept of the "lifetime contract" as an implement with which to bend the CBA into a pretzel...

View full sizeAP PhotoKeeping Henrik Zetterberg in the fold for another 11 years? That's just smart.

July 20, Yahoo Sports: Do these lifetime contracts circumvent the salary cap? Of course, but
they do so by exploiting a loophole in the current CBA that will be
closed up about 10 seconds into the next negotiation between the league
and the Players Association. Is a 17-year contract a "joke" or a
"farce," two words that have been tossed around like a Nerf football for
the last 24 hours? Nah. I've argued before that lifetime contracts are
actually good for the NHL, from a fan's perspective. From
an old Wyshynski vs. Mirtle debate after Henrik
Zetterberg(notes)
signed his massive deal with the Detroit
Red Wings:

If you're going to have a cap, you have to allow
for some creative accounting so teams are able to hold onto the players
they draft, nurture and then promote as stars. A front-loaded contract
with a reduced cap hit allows a team like, say, Detroit to keep a star
player while also hanging onto other talent.

The Devils didn't
draft Kovalchuk, but they did sacrifice assets to acquire him at the
trade deadline last season. I see no problem in getting creative to
retain that asset as long as the CBA "allows" the loophole to be
exploited; but Dirk
Hoag had a great suggestion on how to close it:

"Within
a new SPC (Standard Player Contract), no yearly salary can be less than
50% of the highest salary within the span of that contract."

Adam Gretz used Zetterberg's contract as a perfectly valid example of how to work the system in a logical manner--while listing the longest contracts in NHL history;

July 20, Fanhouse: The reasoning for a team wanting to sign a player to such a deal is
quite simple: by agreeing to a longer contract, it's possible for a team
to frontload it (the most money being paid in the first years) which
then lowers the annual salary cap hit (total dollars divided by total
years). There's also a loophole in the current Collective Bargaining
Agreement that says if a player signs a contract before he turns 35, his
cap hit comes off the books when (or if) he retires (also known as the
35-and-over rule).

A good example would be the 12-year
deal the Detroit Red Wings signed Henrik Zetterberg to last season. The first nine years of the contract pay Zetterberg over $7 million per
year. When the contract reaches year 10, the salary drops down to $3
million, and then eventually finishes with two years of $1 million per
season. When all is said and done, it's a contract worth over $72
million, but the yearly cap hit for the Red Wings is just a little over
$6 million per season, which is an extremely reasonable price for an
elite two-way player like Zetterberg. His teammate, Johan Franzen, is
signed to a similar deal, paying him $42.9 million over 11 years (or
about $3.9 million per season).

And Fanhouse's Kevin Schultz takes us out with some amusing takes on what the future holds by making predictions for the 2026-2027 season: